Troubled Times Slash G-8 Aid Pledge

Posted on Jun 26, 2010

With the scent of the global financial crisis swimming in their nostrils, G-8 leaders pledged a mere $5 billion in aid to reduce deaths among African mothers and infants, a decrease of 90 percent in the funding promised five years ago at the group’s meeting in Gleneagles, Scotland. —JCL

Al Jazeera English:

Rich countries have shied away from making bold aid pledges at the G8 summit, mindful of their own tight budgets and past broken promises.

They pledged $5bn in aid over five years to reduce deaths among mothers and their newborns in Africa, at the summit in Toronto on Friday.

The amount is nowhere near the ambitious promise from five years ago to double aid by up to $50 billion by 2010.

The donors delivered only two-thirds, an estimated $18bn, of the money they agreed on at a 2005 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland.